Voucher schools made higher gains in reading

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Published on: 3/3/2012

A multiyear study tracking students in both Milwaukee's private voucher schools and Milwaukee Public Schools found that the voucher schools were exceeding the public schools in several key areas. The report's findings may be significant, especially on reading, but there are still questions, and the bottom line is that improvement and strong accountability are still required for all schools in Milwaukee.

The final installment of an examination of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program shows that voucher schools made significantly higher gains in reading in 2010-'11 than those of a matched sample of peers in MPS. And there also were indications that kids in the choice schools finish high school and go on to college at higher rates than do those in MPS.

The results of the five-year study by Patrick J. Wolf, the study's lead author and a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, have been challenged (see op-eds on the cover of Crossroads and "Another View" below), so the waters certainly are far from crystal clear.

We also know that in many ways, there remains very little difference between the two systems. That argues for strong accountability for both.

As we've long argued, all schools in the city need to improve. Low-income African-American students in both voucher schools and MPS trail their white peers statewide by a wide margin. That's why we argued that the voucher program should not have been expanded to middle-income families. The real need is with low-income kids.

And it's why we're encouraged by several recent developments:

The formation of Milwaukee Succeeds, a collaborative effort organized by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and its partners to create a big-tent approach to solving Milwaukee's educational problems. Its first goal: improving third-grade reading outcomes.

The entry of Rocketship Education schools in Milwaukee. The California-based charter school network voted last week to open up to eight elementary schools in Milwaukee, with the first on the south side opening in 2013. Rocketship has had success teaching poor Latino children.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce's project to create a common report card for all of the Milwaukee's schools whether they be voucher, charter or traditional.

The longitudinal study of the voucher schools tracked a relatively small sample of students over a five-year period. The latest year of the data showed the reading bump for the voucher students and represents the first time an achievement growth advantage was observed. The study also found that students who attended voucher schools were more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college than students in MPS.

Wolf suggested that some of this may stem from parental involvement and schools having higher expectations of children. He recently completed a similar voucher study on schools in the Washington, D.C., area, and he said the results were similar to those in Milwaukee.

Reading may be the most important measuring stick when it comes to education, and over the years, MPS has struggled in that department for minority boys. Black boys in fourth and eighth grades have among the worst reading levels among all urban school districts in the nation. Last year, MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton adopted a districtwide literacy curriculum to replace the 17 reading programs and 13 reading assessments. Thornton says streamlining the reading program has already netted positive results.

Wolf said voucher students may be more likely to graduate because college is emphasized more.

Opponents argue that the graduation rates are artificially high because many students leave the voucher schools before graduation. They also argue that the report's data are not broken out by school.

All of which is to say that the long-awaited longitudinal study won't end the furious debate over whether the voucher schools have improved education in the city. For some students, clearly they have. For most students, it's still too hard to tell.

And what that tells us is that there is a lot more hard work left to do to improve the quality of education for all of Milwaukee's schools. We encourage anyone with an interest in Milwaukee's educational landscape to support the Milwaukee Succeeds effort - and others.

We've got to keep trying.

Are voucher schools more effective than Milwaukee Public Schools? To be considered for publication as a letter to the editor, e-mail your opinion to the Journal Sentinel editorial department.